– Governor: Punishing amounts of water threaten levees (JournalStar, June 14, 2011):
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The river at Sioux City, Iowa, reached 33.12 feet by midafternoon Tuesday, down from 33.55 feet in the morning, as the release from Gavins Point Dam in Yankton, S.D., reached a historic high of 150,000 cubic feet per second.
Most levees around the Missouri River are built to withstand surge waters for three to four days, according to Nebraska Emergency Management officials.
This year, they likely will face punishing amounts of water for several months as the Army Corps of Engineers releases record amounts of water from Gavins Point.
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Farther south, near Fort Calhoun, farmland and the nuclear power plant are surrounded by floodwaters, Heineman said. The power plant is offline for routine maintenance.
In the days of Conan the Barbarian, some 20,000 years ago, it might have made sense to protect your critical infrastructures from flood with dirt bumps.
But today…